Censored Online, Thriving Offline: Post-Platform Websites

We invite you to an in-person creative coding workshop with Maisa Imamović. The event will take place in English.

This workshop is open to all levels of technical expertise, from beginner to advanced.

ABOUT THE WORKSHOP

In response to increasing censorship, surveillance, and state-sanctioned silence, we will explore how to build resilient, offline-first websites. An offline website is a website that is designed to function when your connection drops, is throttled, or is cut off entirely. We will imagine and dwell in the world without the internet - not by accident, but by design.

What kind of websites emerge from severing our dependence on the cloud? Can we resist extraction, evade moderation, and exist without permission? Together, we’ll create web worlds that function as tools for survival, memory, rage, and community. Then, from the shadows of the offline archive, we’ll design a public-facing online teaser — the polished, the ambiguous, the safe-looking. By hiding truths and exposing lies via web design, participants will learn how the medium is a battleground of and tool for both: falsehood and resistance.

Participants are asked to bring their own computer. Outcomes include basic coding skills and the development of individual, published websites, using HTML/CSS, JavaScript, and preferred AI tools.

PROGRAM

15:00 – Workshop Introduction

15:30 – Introduction to Coding

16:30 – Independent Coding Time

17:30 – Web Publishing + Small Presentations

ABOUT MAISA

Maisa Imamović (BiH/NL, 1994) is a writer, web designer/developer, and experimental educator based in Los Angeles and, oftentimes, in Amsterdam.

She critically studies the role of the single user and user behaviors generated by code. She codes to challenge the ideology of user-friendliness, support cultural platforms, respond to political gems, and socialize. Text + Code are her main mediums. In 2022, her first book *The Psychology of the Web Developer, Reality of a Female Freelancer *was published by the Institute of Network Cultures. In the academic year of 2024-2025, she taught creative coding and the history of cyberfeminism as an adjunct professor at USC Media Arts + Practice, UCLA Design Media Arts, ArtCenter Interaction Design, CalArts Critical Studies and Integrated Media.

She holds an MA degree in Aesthetics & Politics from the California Institute of the Arts. In 2025, her second book entitled Maisa in Webland: Detouring UX Destinieswas published by Set Margins. Currently, she is pursuing a Ph.D. in Media Arts + Practice at the University of Southern California.